


encore (et moi je t'aime un peu plus fort)

by firefeufuego



Series: sad orchestra au [2]
Category: Mozart in the Jungle (TV), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossover, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Jyn is less than excellent at communication, Sad viola playing, The author has a hard-on for Rachmaninoff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:45:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefeufuego/pseuds/firefeufuego
Summary: 'Sometimes he’ll see a poster for one of Jyn’s concerts, or Bodhi or Leia (but never Kay) will accidentally bring her up in conversation when they catch up, but Cassian’s fine with it. He is. He’s fine, and perfectly content, or at least perfectly resigned, to never seeing her again.'The angsty Mozart in the Jungle au you've no doubt all been waiting for and sequel to 'Poco a poco' by canardroublard.





	1. e lucevan el stelle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [canardroublard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canardroublard/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Poco a poco](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10437243) by [canardroublard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canardroublard/pseuds/canardroublard). 



> First thing's first. If you've yet to read the marvellous 'Poco a poco' by canardroublard, then DO IT RIGHT NOW. CLICK ON THE LINK AND TREAT YOURSELF. It is the backstory for this fic and a lot of the emotional beats of the later chapters will resonate much more strongly if you've read it. Also, you don't need to have watched Mozart in the Jungle to enjoy this but you totally should because it's delightful.

___London (LHR) -- British Airways -- BA1506 -- 05:55pm -- 8 -- Landed - On-time_ _ _

Cassian tries to stop himself bouncing on his toes like a child. He’s in the Terminal 8 arrivals hall of JFK, waiting for Jyn with a handmade sign that she’ll roll her eyes at but secretly love. She’s coming home from her first extensive international tour. She’s young for it but she’s more than good enough and the narrative of a beautiful former child prodigy returning to the stage is like catnip to marketing.

It’s been six months since he’s seen her and he’s missed her even more than he thought he would, her absence like a throbbing bruise always on the edge of his consciousness. Their most recent phone call, when she told him that they were adding another week to the tour, was rough and Cassian let his more of his frustration bleed into his tone than he’d usually allow. But now that absence is finally over and they’ll get at least three months together. It’s not enough time, but he doesn’t think he could ever spend enough time with Jyn. They’ve been together four years now and Cassian’s noticed his eyes lingering on jewellery stores more and more, the idea of becoming each other’s official family growing in a small, safe place in his mind.

He checks the time - 6:40, she should be out soon. He thinks about which wine would go best with the roast dinner he’s made (Jyn’s favourite because it reminds her so much of home) and decides on the Bordeaux he got as a thank you for playing at some corporate event and has been saving for a special occasion.

The clock ticks over to seven and he wonders if anything’s gone wrong, JFK’s queues are infamous and it’s perfectly likely she’s still stuck in immigration or customs. He tries to call her anyway, mostly expecting she’ll still have her phone on airplane mode. Instead, it rings four times and then goes straight to voicemail.

Strange.

Perhaps her finger slipped when she went to pick up, so he calls again. This time it only rings once. He leaves a voicemail saying he just wanted to know how she was getting on, that he’s standing in front of a big concrete pillar, that he can’t wait to see her.

There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach but Cassian’s never been a pessimist, her phone could have been stolen, could be broken, perhaps she’s on a really important call. So he waits, watches as friends, families and lovers are joyfully reunited like it’s the opening scene of ___Love Actually.___

He tries calling every ten minutes, aware that more and more of his worry is seeping into every message. With growing dread, he thinks of all the times she’s ignored her father’s calls, how doggedly she can cut someone out of her life when she feels she needs to.

Finally, she texts him, _You deserve better_.

Any hope he had that this was some crazy misunderstanding and she was still coming home to him is crushed in his chest along with his heart. His mind races trying to parse her meaning. Jyn’s never been one for self-loathing, unless she’s done something awful while she was away, a passionate tryst with some exotic virtuoso perhaps, but no, she’s nothing if not loyal. Maybe this is her version of that most meaningless of break-up cliches, ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ tossed at him so she can avoid having a proper conversation about what she’s feeling. That sounds the most like Jyn, but he never would have thought she could be so callous to someone who hadn’t hurt her first. Perhaps the only explanation is that he never really knew her at all. That he fell so hard and so deeply that he’s invented someone and something between them that was never really there.

Someone jostles his shoulder, a woman arm in arm with her wife or girlfriend, blissfully unaware of Cassian’s world crumbling around him. He can feel the building pressure and sting of tears and blinks them back. There’ll be plenty of time for that, to mourn the loss of the woman he at least thought Jyn was. It still takes effort to turn away, to give up on the hope that she’ll appear with some perfectly innocent explanation. He tries calling her one more time. His heart lifts when it rings more than once, mind forming the right words to convince or reassure her when she picks up, but after the seventh ring he hears the familiar, brusque tone of her answering message. Cassian never thought he could hate the sound of Jyn’s voice. He tosses his sign in the bin as he makes his way to the exit, the garishly painted words now a sick taunt,

_Welcome home!_

* * *

 

The first week without Jyn passes in a haze. He doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol because he’s not sure he’d be able to stop drinking if he started. Instead, he practises until his fingers bleed, playing the saddest pieces from his repertoire and then when he runs out of those, inventing ad hoc viola arrangements of tragic arias. If he breaks down during _E lucevan le stelle_ then at least no one is there to hear him. His next-door neighbour banged on his door a couple of times until he opened it and whatever she saw (red eyes, unwashed hair and the distinct air of someone who might shatter at any moment) made her cut him some slack. In his weakest moment he tries to call Jyn, only to find she’s changed her number. He calls Bodhi who says he’s spoken to her but she didn’t tell him why she left.

‘She uh, she didn’t sound well.’ Bodhi says, like he’s tip-toeing around a much harsher truth.

Cassian ignores the swell of worry, the urge to track her down and try to fix whatever’s gone wrong. Jyn doesn’t want that from him anymore, doesn’t want anything from him anymore. He gives rein to the bitter, ugly part of him that’s glad she’s upset, that thinks she should be. Bodhi ends the conversation with a promise to take care of her and Cassian tries and fails not to feel jealous of the fact that Jyn will let him.

* * *

 

The haze is broken a few days later when someone knocks on his door. His heart starts pounding, certain and exultant that Jyn has changed her mind and come home. He yanks open the door and tries not to let his face fall too obviously when he finds Cynthia on the other side. She takes one look at him, sighs, and walks past him into the apartment. He quickly steps out of the way of her cello and follows her into the kitchen.

‘I knew something must have gone wrong to make Cassian Andor miss a gig.’

He freezes, suddenly remembering the Hartford wedding he was meant to be playing this morning. ‘Fuck. I completely forgot.’ It hurts to talk, his throat rough from disuse.

She shakes her head. ‘Don’t worry about it, the one good thing about being a violist is no one even noticed you weren’t there.’ There’s a teasing lilt to her voice and Cassian’s mouth twitches for the first time in what feels like forever. Then he remembers why he hasn’t smiled and the crushing weight of it overcomes him again. He sees her eyes catch on the box of Jyn’s things on the dining room table, ready to be sent to Bodhi. ‘When did she leave?’

He collapses onto a stool at the counter. ‘Friday before last.’

Cyn’s eyes soften in sympathy, and more than that, in empathy. There’s a deep sadness she carries around with her, the emotion flowing through her playing, aching like a bruise but somehow still so beautiful. It’s almost comforting now, to have someone who knows in exquisite detail what it’s like be heartbroken and lonely. ‘I’m sorry Cassian.’

It’s the first of what he knows will be many apologies whenever someone asks after Jyn. He dreads having to repeat the truth over and over,  _Yes, she left me. No, I don’t know why._  They will only remind him of deeper truths, _No, I’m not holding up. Yes, I still love her. No, I don’t know if she ever loved me._

Noticing him starting to get lost in his thoughts, Cynthia switches to caretaker mode, briskly opening his fridge to survey what she has to work with. ‘Are you hungover?’

He shakes his head.

‘Good. Go and shower. I’ll make you an omelette.’

Cassian obeys, pausing only to touch his hand to her arm. ‘Thanks Cyn.’

She scrunches up her nose. ‘You can thank me by washing. Go.’

He goes.

* * *

 

He doesn’t fall into bed with Cynthia that night, or the next. But somewhere along the way, as they both pine for people they can’t have, it becomes natural to turn to each other for comfort, for a brief respite from loneliness. He never lets himself imagine Cyn’s features a little softer, body more muscular, her eyes green instead of brown, never lets his tongue slip on the first letter of her name, but he still never quite manages to close his eyes when they’re together.

Years pass and the hole Jyn left in his life starts to scar over. Cyn’s orchestra, the New York Symphony, needs an violist and she listens to his audition piece until they’re both sick of it. Thankfully, the maestro and the first viola chair, a scowling man named David who plays like every piece is a battle, like it well enough and Cassian is able to devote himself to his new orchestra with everything he has. Sometimes he’ll see a poster for one of Jyn’s concerts, or Bodhi or Leia (but never Kay) will accidentally bring her up in conversation when they catch up, but Cassian’s fine with it. He is. He’s fine, and perfectly content, or at least perfectly resigned, to never seeing her again.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music notes:  
> -E lucevan el stelle (How the stars used to shine there) from Tosca is one of Cassian's sad viola arias (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQyz4lt7PA  
> -Cassian's audition piece is the first movement of Ernest Bloch's 'Suite hebraique' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEYyFxa3gHM)  
> Thanks so much for reading.  
> 


	2. the rehearsal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn comes back into his life in exactly the same way she entered it the first time, by literally knocking him to the ground. At least this time he’s not holding his viola.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting the music notes at the beginning this time because I think this chapter will be much more enjoyable while/after having listened.  
> -Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 2 (This chapter goes into depth about the First Movement, later I'll focus more on the Second)  
> -Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme or 'Enigma Variations' (I mention numbers 11 (Nimrod) and 13 (Romanza))  
> Canardroublard, our mutual loathing of alto clefs has been expressed here, as I think you would want.  
> I decided to write Cassian and Rodrigo's conversation in Spanish but if you hover the mouse over the text, the English translation should appear in a box. Let me know if it's not working for you.

* * *

_Five years later_

Rodrigo de Sousa is a talented man with almost preternatural gifts, and one of them is making other people so furious you can hear it from the other side of a building. Right now, he's managed to anger two people to the point of apoplexy. Gloria Windsor and Winslow Elliot are currently making their feelings regarding Rodrigo's replacement of Elliot with another soloist _quite_ clear. Elliot is yelling about humiliation and closets and coats (something for which Cassian, who has a lot of time for coats, can't really fault him) and Cassian listens with a strange blend of concerned amusement as he walks through the corridors of August Memorial Hall to pick up a book he'd left in his locker. This orchestra is his home and he would give anything to protect it, but he also trusts Rodrigo. After all, they go back a long way.

Rodrigo de Sousa is Cassian’s oldest friend, a fact he enjoys reminding Rodrigo of whenever he starts worrying about the grey in his beard. They met in Maestro Rivera’s youth orchestra in Tepoztlán, where Cassian spent the first twelve years of his life before his parents’ deaths. Rodrigo was older and his virtuosity was already evident. Cassian idolised him and in return Rodrigo took him under his wing, teaching him everything from bowing techniques to how to break into a car. Circumstance separated them. Rodrigo was plucked from obscurity by a youth conducting competition while Cassian was sent to live with his uncle in the US, a dour man who didn’t share his sister’s love for music and forced Cassian to take lessons behind his back, paid for by doing odd jobs for his classmates’ parents. He hadn’t seen his friend again until Gloria announced to the orchestra that he’d be replacing Pembridge at the end of the season. It was the cause of much consternation, both inside the orchestra and out, but Cassian was deeply glad. In his experience, friends were rare and precious things and it was nice to have such a fierce reminder of home, especially when the home he thought he'd made was so brutally ripped away from him.

Elliot yells, 'And who is the usurper? Who is the pianist so remarkable to warrant such a violent disgrace?' There's a moment of silence and then, 'JYN ERSO?!'

Cassian freezes. He tries never to think of her (and fails and fails), hoping that the lack of oxygen would kill the flame that still burns in his heart, but judging by the way his heart is trying to escape from his chest, it has not worked.

He waits until the fire of Elliot and Gloria's anger has burned out, exhausted no doubt by Rodrigo's unshakeable confidence in his own gut instinct, walking to Rodrigo's office to wait for him. There he finds his assistant, having just finished making his mate.

He likes Hailey, has ever since she panicked and yelled ‘Motherfucker’ at her first rehearsal. Plus, she looks at Rodrigo like it hurts to look away and Cassian will always sympathise with people deeper in love than they perhaps should be. Hailey will be good for Rodrigo once she gets over the last of her awe and starts being able to push him around. God knows Cassian’s never met a person more in need of that than the maestro.

‘Hey.’

She’s so authentically warm and he can’t help but smile when he replies, ‘Hi Hailey.’

'Are you also here to yell at him about Elliot?' She says it with the beleaguered tone of someone who's had to listen to a lot of shouting recently through no fault of her own.

'Sort of, I'm here to yell at him about Jyn.' He almost can't believe how naturally her name rolls off his tongue.

'You mean Jyn Erso? Rodrigo said you guys went to school together, that you used to go out.' 

 _Go out,_ it sounds so adolescent, so harmless. He nods. 'Used to. God, how does he know this stuff?'

'He said he was friends with one of the teachers there, Chi-something?'

The idea of Rodrigo and Chirrut Imwe gossiping together sounds deeply plausible and Cassian groans. Still, he's pretty sure his viola teacher never knew how things ended between Jyn and him, so Rodrigo probably doesn't know just how monumentally he's fucked Cassian over.

Suddenly, an almost primordial cry sounds from the hallway, 'HAAAAIII LAAAIII.'

Hailey hurries towards the door with the mate but Cassian puts his hand on her arm to stop her.

‘No, he doesn’t deserve it.’

Hayley’s lips twist but she replies, ‘Maybe not, but he does pay me for it.’

He gets a five dollar note from his wallet and holds it up. 'Is this enough?'

‘It'll do.' She hands over the gourd. 'Pleasure doing business with you.’

He takes a sip and almost groans. ‘Hailey, this is amazing.’

Rodrigo walks in, sees the mate in Cassian's hands and puts his hand to his chest like he's been shot, 'Hai Lai, how could you betray me in this way?

‘I’ll make you another one Maestro.’ She manages to sound genuinely apologetic while stifling laughter, which is probably a necessary skill around Rodrigo.

‘Take your time Hailey, and don’t make it as good as this one.’

Rodrigo opens his mouth to protest but Cassian just glares at him. Hailey leaves to fill up the kettle.

 _'¿Qué pasa?'_ Rodrigo asks like he hasn't just been shouted at for twenty minutes straight.

Cassian's having none of it. _'¿Por qué lo hiciste?' _

Rodrigo puts his hands up innocently. _'¿Por qué lo hice que? Siempre hago cosas.'_

Cassian inhales deeply and grits out, _'¿Por qué remplazaste a Winslow Elliot por Jyn Erso?'_

Rodrigo tilts his head, probably trying to figure out why he's so upset. _'Vi un video de Youtube con ella y fue como,'_ he imitates an explosion. _'Toca con tanto sangre. Esta orquestra, está muriendo y ella será nuestra transfusión.'_

He can't really argue with that, though he'd describe the orchestra as 'troubled' rather than 'dying'. Elliot is a superb pianist but he is so very deeply status quo. Jyn is, not that, and she'll be a breath of fresh air for August Memorial. Still, if Rodrigo's been talking to Hailey about how he and Jyn were together, he must be up to something else. _'¿Y no tienes ningún otro motivo?'_

The other man shrugs. _'Bueno, un viejo amigo puede haberme dicho de la relación entre ella y un otro de mis viejos amigos, quien ha estado miserable y solo durante años._ He looks at Cassian with concern in his eyes.

 _'¿Y si ella es la razón por que estoy miserable y solo?'_   He lets some of his pain slip into his voice and Rodrigo's face grows serious.

'Ah.'

 _'Me abandonó en la sala de llegadas de JFK hace cinco años.'_   It feels strange to say it so matter of factly, when the pain, ignored for so long, is still almost as fresh as the night it happened.

Rodrigo winces. 'Ay.' He draws Cassian into his arms and he sinks into the hug. _'Ay chico, lo siento mucho.'_

Hailey walks in with a full kettle in one hand and a Toblerone in the other. 'Hey! Hugging instead of yelling. This is so great, my eardrums thank you.' She goes to put the kettle on.

Cassian eyes the chocolate, Rodrigo's favourite. 'Is that for him?'

She nods. 'He's had a rough day.'

Rodrigo says, 'Ay no, I think maybe I do not deserve the long triangular prism chocolate. I fucked up.'

'And you're admitting it? Cassian, what has he done to you?'

Listening to Hailey's gentle teasing, the affection clear in her voice, Cassian remembers Jyn teasing his jacket collection or going on about how stupid the alto clef is, and he misses her with a ferocity he hasn’t felt a long time. 'He was trying to help but it's a pretty hopeless situation.'

'Hopeless? No!' Rodrigo's outraged. 'Always there is hope.'

Hailey places a hand on Cassian's shoulder. 'If she doesn't love you, she's crazy.' She's figured it out, but that's not surprising, her emotional intelligence has always surpassed her age. That, and the signs of unrequited love are much easier to recognise when you know how it feels.

Cassian glaces toward Rodrigo, who's now hugging both of them, before saying quietly, 'Same goes for you.'

The kettle boils, everyone separates and Cassian starts towards the door.

He stops and turns with a question. 'What's she playing?'

'Rachmaninoff. Concerto No 2.'

Cassian's brow furrows. 'You wanted something new and different so you went all the way from Rachmaninoff's third concerto to his second?'

Rodrigo shrugs. 'She insisted.'

'And you just let your soloist tell you which piece to program.'

'I thought that if she has such passion for this piece, then she'll play it better than whatever I choose.'

Frowning, he says goodbye to both of them and heads home. From what he knows of her career (which is a lot, thanks to drunken binges of her concerts in moments of weakness), she hasn't done much Rachmaninoff, certainly not enough to justify demanding to play it. He spends the next few days practising the concerto, imagining how it will sound from her hands, as dread laced with anticipation curls in his stomach.

* * *

 Jyn Erso comes back into his life in exactly the same way she entered it the first time, by literally knocking him to the ground. At least this time he’s not holding his viola.

‘ _Fuck_ , I’m so sorry.’ The pile of sheet music she was carrying has scattered all over the floor and she’s swearing under her breath as she picks it up. Cassian lies frozen where he fell, the sight and sound of her after so long is too much. She suddenly stops talking and he assumes she’s noticed who he is. They stare at each other, marking the ways in which the years have changed them. Jyn has somehow grown lovelier. She wears her leather jacket and her attitude with a new authority that makes it even harder for him to take his eyes off her.

Her expression is mostly unreadable, but she seems off-balance in a way that can’t be wholly explained by their recent collision. What she doesn't look is surprised to see him. He assumes Rodrigo told her he was a member of the orchestra when he first approached her. He wonders how much money he had to offer her before she said yes. _That, or it really didn't matter to her whether you were here or not._

He realises he’s been sprawled on the floor for the better part of a minute and hurries to stand up. He has to brace himself before he can look directly at her. Even then, her magnificent eyes are too dangerous to him, so he focuses his gaze just below them as he acknowledges her. ‘Jyn.’

He can’t help but catch the way she briefly bites her lip before responding in kind, 'Cassian.'

He feels a shiver run through him. In the vulnerable time between sleep and wakefulness, he's imagined her saying his name so many times that it feels like a waking dream to be hearing it now.

The room feels airless until Rodrigo breaks the tension, bursting into the room and exuberantly welcoming Jyn to the New York Symphony. This is all his fault, but nevertheless Cassian appreciates him distracting her and guiding her away.

He leans his forehead against the cool wall for a moment before cursing under his breath, _'Chinga madre,'_ and walking out to the stage.

* * *

Rehearsal is utter torture. Jyn plays the crescending first chords of the First Movement like a death knell. It takes every bit of control and professionalism he has just to come in on time with the theme. He can’t even believe she’s there, living and breathing seven feet away from him. He keeps expecting to blink and find her replaced again with a stranger with her hair and a blank expression on her face.

But here she is, even more mesmerising than he remembered. Jyn has always been an amazing pianist, but in the last five years she’s become something else. Rodrigo wants his musicians to ‘play with the blood’ and Jyn plays with enough blood to drown in, her arpeggios rolling and crashing like waves in a storm. He can see her face perfectly from where he’s sitting, her chin set in determined concentration and her eyes alight.

He’s always felt so close to her when he’s playing with her, almost as close as during sex. It’s intoxicating and he lets himself sink into it, thinks and feels and breathes nothing but the music. By the short back and forth between the violas and piano, he’s almost happy. This is the most he’s felt while playing in a long time, her passion infectious.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees Jyn watching him but he lets the lyrical second theme wash over him before his mind has a chance to analyse it too deeply. The rest of the movement ebbs and flows, a conversation between the two themes, then builds to a climax with massive piano chords that require a huge amount of strength. Cassian watches in awe as Jyn thunders out the notes without any apparent difficulty before transitioning into the march.

Here Rodrigo cuts them off, and it’s like being plunged in cold water. Both his breath and heartbeat are racing and he has to close his eyes to calm himself down.

Rodrigo is giving instructions about the articulation of that last section, where the piano takes centre stage and relegates the orchestra to accompaniment. ‘Jyn, you’re so furious, you’re still fighting the orchestra. Es maestoso, no? It should be that you won the battle and now it’s your parade.’

Jyn plays it again, statelier this time and Rodrigo nods.

‘Casi, almost. But bouncier you know? Like dum ba ba ba da ya da dum ba ba ba da ya da dum.’

His fingers bounce off his hand as he sings and Jyn’s lip twitches, probably because of his terrible voice. She plays it as he sang it and he claps his hands.

‘¡Eso es! Let’s try with everybody.’

Jyn smiles, something that’s often hard to fight around Rodrigo, and Cassian is lost. His stomach sinks at the dead certainty that he will never be able to stop loving her as fiercely as he does in that moment, this beautiful, brilliant woman who does not want him.

* * *

After they finish running through the first movement, Union Bob, bless his soul, announces it’s time for a break. Cassian jumps from his chair and rushes outside, desperate for air. He’s almost tempted to ask Didi for something to calm him down but settles instead for bumming a cigarette off Pavel. He can’t light it though because his fingers are shaking.

‘Here.’ Cynthia’s voice comes from beside him and she takes the lighter and does it for him.

She doesn’t say anything else but her presence is comfort enough. They stopped sleeping together years ago, when things started up again between her and Thomas and Cassian realised his feelings for Jyn weren’t fading like he’d hoped, but she’s still one of his dearest friends, a calm counterweight to the variations of eccentricity that are Rodrigo and Kay.

He only makes it a third of the way through the cigarette before he remembers how much he hates them, but it’s at least distracted him enough to let his mind settle a bit.

‘You gonna be okay?’

All he can do is shrug. He’s a motherfucking professional, second viola chair in the New York Symphony, he can handle playing in front of the long lost love of his life for a week. Cyn gives him a hug and then makes a curious noise like she’s reacting to something over his shoulder.

‘What is it?’

She seems to deliberate on what to tell him before deciding on, ‘It was probably nothing, don’t worry about it.’

Cassian has more than enough to worry about, so he lets it go. They separate and head back inside.

After a pause Cyn says, ‘I know this sucks for you and everything, but this is the best we’ve sounded in a long time.’

It’s true, but that doesn’t surprise him. There is something inspirational in Jyn, a fire raging inside her that yearns to spread.

‘Don’t tell Pembridge that.’

She grimaces. ‘I don’t tell Thomas much of anything anymore. I think he’s still fucking around in Cuba.’

‘You know that’s a good thing, Cyn. He’s an asshole.’ He’s never liked Pembridge, who manages to surround himself with astounding women whom he treats equally poorly.

‘Yeah, well. If people were always able to fall for nice people who treated them well, I’m sure you and I would have done it by now.’

He nods his head in concession, because Jyn is many things, but 'nice' is not one of them.

* * *

The rest of the rehearsal goes smoothly enough, though the bittersweet beauty of the Second Movement, which always pulls at his heart, is especially effective today. 

They take another break and Cassian tries not to think too much of it when he sees Jyn walk out of the bathroom closely followed by Cynthia, both of them with strange looks on their faces.

The playful Third Movement is thankfully void of any emotional landmines, and as long as he keeps his eyes off the piano, he enjoys himself. Mercifully, Jyn is good enough that she doesn't need a lot of fine-tuning by Rodrigo. Since her time is more expensive than the orchestra's (and everything, as Rodrigo would lament, is about the money), she leaves relatively early to a small round of applause from the orchestra and ecstatic praise from Rodrigo. Cassian assiduously writes bowing markings on his score so he doesn’t risk catching her gaze. Her leaving eases some, though not all, of the tension in his body.

They move on the the second piece of the program, Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations', a series of lovingly captured musical portraits of the composer's friends and family. They're mostly lighter than the Rachmaninoff, by turns sweet and funny. ‘Nimrod’ is at once stirring and soothing and at the climax Cassian smiles for the first time all day. The orchestra really does have a cohesiveness now that they've been sorely lacking.

Then comes the thirteenth variation, where Elgar laments the loss of his first love. It hits hard, breaking down any buffer between him and the raging storm of emotions he's been fighting all day. There is nothing he wants more now than to go home and do whatever breaking down he needs to do in private.

* * *

 He manages to make it out without having to speak to anyone and as soon as he gets home, he pours himself a large glass of wine, changes into his sleep clothes and lies on his couch, watching the most mindless tv he can find. Still, nothing dulls the flood of memories, of Jyn playing for him, smiling at him, kissing him, fucking him, leaving him, each of them with a knife-sharp edge that they haven't had in years.

A knock on the door breaks him out of his revery. It’s probably Rodrigo, looking for a pitstop on one of his insomniac bike tours of the city. Good, Cassian needs a distraction from the constant loop of desire, anger and self-pity swirling around his brain. He opens the door expecting to be faced with the maestro and a passionate argument for why actually it’s impossible that they play the Bach in September because Bach hates him or an invitation to join some illicit Balkan folk dancing ring he found in a park. 

Instead, it’s Jyn. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those interested, Jyn's POV of this chapter can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16813831


	3. enigma (E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even if she doesn’t love him, at least not enough to stay, he can make sure she wants him for tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After two whole chapters with no interaction between Cassian and Jyn, have a whole chapter with nothing but. You may have noticed from the tags but this chapter is the reason for the Explicit rating so be advised. No music in this one but I like to imagine that Cassian was listening to The National's 'I Need My Girl' before Jyn showed up.

* * *

  _A knock on the door breaks him out of his revery. It’s probably Rodrigo, looking for a pitstop on one of his insomniac bike tours of the city. Good, Cassian needs a distraction from the constant loop of desire, anger and self-pity swirling around his brain. He opens the door expecting to be faced with the maestro and a passionate argument for why actually it’s impossible that they play the Bach in September because Bach hates him or an invitation to join some illicit Balkan folk dancing ring he found in a park._

_Instead, it’s Jyn._

* * *

 

Cassian’s breath hitches and his heart starts pounding. He briefly considers slamming the door in her face but knows that he’ll never be able to, that he’ll always want to see her for as long and in whatever way he can. There’s a stubborn set to her jaw that’s belied by the vulnerability in her eyes. The expression is so Jyn and _fuck_ , he loves her. Wordlessly, he lets her in. She walks straight past him, making her way through his apartment like she owns it. She finds his bedroom and walks in, Cassian following her slowly and quietly, as if a creak in the floorboards will startle her and make her leave again.

She’s standing in front of his bed, whatever wave of emotion she rode here having drained out of her, and Cassian’s reminded of how small she actually is. She looks how he feels, tired and sad and lonely. Jyn swallows and clears her throat then nods at the bed, trying to feign indifference.

‘Do you want to?’

It knocks the air out of him. This is a bad idea. Terrible. Colossally awful. His bruised and battered heart will hurt enough when she leaves without being reminded of the taste of her skin or the sounds she makes when she comes for him.

He’s about to tell her no when he sees how carefully she’s watching his expression, like she needs it, needs him. The thought twists at something inside him. _Joder_ , he doesn’t understand her at all, has no idea what she wants from him.

Seeing his indecision, Jyn’s face falls and she abruptly turns and stalks out of the room towards his front door. Cassian storms after her, the sight of her walking away too much to bear.

‘Jyn, for fuck’s sake, just wait a minute.’

His longer legs easily catch up and he stands between her and the door.

‘This was a mistake,’ she grits out.

She’s angry now, eyes burning and muscles tense like she’s preparing to strike. Good. Cassian’s angry too, the feeling filling up places inside him that have been empty for too long. Part of him wants to fight, to demand that she explain why she left, to make her hurt like she’s hurt him, but the other part can’t help but stare at her.He watches as the colour raises in her cheeks, the flush bringing out the red of her lips. His mouth waters as he remembers how those lips felt against his, how she kisses like she plays, with her whole soul.

God, this is a terrible idea, he knows that, but if he’s going to hurt anyway, he may as well go in for a fucking pound.

 

He comes closer until he’s standing right in front of her, the warm puffs of her breath hitting his collarbone. Jyn stands her ground but her flush deepens, spreading down her throat and under the neckline of her shirt. Her gaze flickers to his lips so he licks them, which elicits an almost inaudible whimper.

‘I want this.’ He pitches his voice low because he remembers she likes it.

Even if she doesn’t love him, at least not enough to stay, he can make sure she wants him for tonight.

There’s a pause, both of them watching each other, waiting to see who’ll make the first move. Eventually Jyn loses patience, mutters, ‘ _Fuck it’_ , grasps his head in her hands and brings him down to meet her lips. It’s been five and a half years since they’ve kissed but their heads still know just how much to tilt. Her palms framing his face feel so familiar that he can’t help the embarrassingly needy whine that escapes him.

She tastes exactly the way she did when she first kissed him. He remembers the thrill of that night, high on post-concert adrenaline and his desperate crush on her, remembers the white lines of rosin on her blue dress, tangible evidence that what had just happened hadn’t been a dream.

 _God._ This is exactly the kind of reminiscing that’s going to wreck him when she leaves.

He breaks the kiss and turns her around to face the wall. He’s terrified of the desperate, pathetic things that might come tripping out of his mouth if he looks at her face like this. He makes sure to give her space in case she’s not okay with it, but Jyn just sinks into him, her body fitting against his as if it were made to. His hands go to her hips, running up her sides as he relearns the lines of her body. She quickly rips off her shirt and bra and he moans softly at the feel of the smooth, soft skin over all her lean muscle. He traces the ridges of her abs, her ribs, relishing the feeling of her breath growing heavier.

 

Finally, his hands find her breasts and it’s Jyn’s turn to moan, a choked sound that seems to escape her mouth without her permission. This is the point that she’d usually start directing him to where she wants him most, telling him how best to please her, but now she stays silent. It’s as if they’re both terrified that words will shatter the fragile truce between them and make them have to stop.

He teases her with slow, light passes of his thumbs over her nipples until they grow hard, Jyn leaning into his touch to try and increase the pressure. She steps forward, leaning on the wall and trapping his hands against her skin. He follows her, pressing up against her until there’s not an inch left between them.

Her whole body shudders in pleasure like a leaf in a storm.

 _She likes this_. He’s never touched her this way, unwilling to forsake the emotional connection before now. He brings a hand down to unbutton her jeans and Jyn’s quick to help, unzipping and kicking off her shoes, pants and underwear like they’re burning her. There’s something deeply erotic about her naked body against his clothed one, a feeling intensified by her the roll of her hips against his hand where it cups her. He parts her with one finger, circling the sensitive entrance of her cunt and pressing his palm against her clit, letting her find the pressure she needs. She keens and grips his hair to give herself leverage enough to grind down harder. Cassian ruts against her ass as it brushes his cock, but it’s too much. If this is his last chance to be with her, he’s going to make it last. He shoves his desire down, focusing everything on Jyn.

Mouthing at the sensitive spot just behind her ear, he lets her get herself close, savouring the sounds that escape her with each heaving breath. Then he grasps her hips to stop her moving them and she whines as she writhes against his grip. His hands stay firm and his lips tease at the smooth skin of her neck. He runs a hand from her hip to her leg and strokes her inner thighs and the creases where they meet her labia, careful not to touch her where she’s most sensitive. The feeling of her shivering in his arms, so desperate for him, is topped only by the sound of her breathing out his name, at once a plea and a chastisement.

His hands stop moving altogether and Jyn almost screams in frustration.

Finally, she gives him what he’s been silently asking for. She turns her head so her lips are at his ear and whispers, ‘ _Please_ Cass, I need it.’

For a moment he mishears that last word, and the wave of longing overwhelms him, but this is okay, this can be enough.

He takes one of her hands from the wall and places it over her clit then eases a finger inside her, biting back a groan at the feel of her warm and tight around him. His other arm bands around her chest, holding her trembling body steady against him. He adds another finger as her rhythm quickens and Cassian matches her like they’re playing together, finding a common tempo. Her breaths are coming so fast now she’s almost hyperventilating, chasing release like she’s so close she can touch it. She lets out an almost wounded cry, and then her body starts to clench and shake. Cassian feels it in every inch of her body and it’s almost enough to send him over the edge as well.

 

He holds her up while she regains her bearings, resisting the urge to press kisses to her hair and face. He reminds himself that this is just sex, that just because she’s attracted to him, doesn’t mean she wants anything more.

Jyn comes back to herself and immediately starts stripping him, ridding him of his clothes with an almost military efficiency. She steps back, glorious in the golden light of his reading lamp, and takes him in.

He fights back a rush of self-consciousness. Objectively, he knows the past five years have been kind to him, but Jyn is almost impossibly lovely and he doesn’t know how he could measure up.

Still, she’s looking at him with an intense hunger in her eyes, her tongue passing over her lips before she swallows visibly. It stokes the fire in his belly even higher and he moves closer to her. She takes him in her arms and both of them cry out at the heady, electric feeling of their bare bodies touching after so long.

He lifts her and she wraps her legs around his hips, rocking hers into him as she mouths at his neck. The feeling of her, hot and slick, as she rubs against his cock is incredible and his whole body trembles with need.

 

He carries her towards his bedroom, but he has to stop to readjust his grip and as he presses her against the wall, he gets distracted by the way her thighs clench tighter around his hips. Gently, he sets her back down on her feet and then sinks to his knees. With a bitten-off curse, Jyn arches her neck and tilts her hips forward to him.

Cassian has to close his eyes, the sight of her too much. Instead, he focuses on how she tastes, teasing her inner thighs with kisses and brushes of his tongue before he licks a line from her clit to her cunt. She tastes like nothing else, musky and tart and just a little bit sweet and he hums against her in satisfaction. Jyn’s moan in response is obscene, loud and long.

He buries his head between her thighs and starts to eat her out in earnest, his tongue moving from soft, broad swipes of her labia to circling her clit and curling inside her, until Jyn starts to slide down the wall. He feels more than hears the sounds she makes, the vibrations resonating through her body and surrounding him. Taking her hips in his hands, he encourages her to grind down against his mouth.

She moves a thigh away from his ear as she asks, ‘You sure?’ Her voice is more than a little wrecked and it’s quite possibly the sexiest thing he’s ever heard.

He nods, letting his nose brush back and forth over her clit as he does.

Jyn puts one leg over his shoulder, her foot pressing into his back, and her hands go to his head. He tries not to show just how much he likes the feeling of her fingers carding through his hair, instead sitting back on his feet to give her a better angle.

She starts slowly but soon gets impatient. His hands guide her hips as they find a rhythm that works for her. She fucks him with an almost desperate ruthlessness, taking exactly what she wants from him while her foot presses hard enough to bruise and her fingernails send shivery trails of pain over his scalp.

Every one of his senses is utterly consumed by her, the lush, wet heat of her cunt against his face, the way she smells and tastes, the sound and feel of her moans, and, in the brief moments when he looks up at her, the sight of her so completely undone for him, skin flushed, head back and her chest heaving. He’s so hard it hurts but he can ignore it as long as he gets to have this.

As she gets close, her legs start to quake and he grips her hips even tighter to hold her up. He’s going to leave his own bruises and there’s a primal part of him that relishes the thought of her remembering this, thinking about him, even after she’s gone.

She comes, hard, her body going soft and lax. He catches her as she sinks to the floor, fingers replacing his mouth as he rides her through it. He goes to move away but she grips his wrist, keeping his hand where it is. She shivers with the aftershocks, making tiny, adorable sounds with each. His heart swells and clenches and, fuck, she is so dangerous. He has to get away. He goes to the kitchen to get her a glass of water and doesn’t miss the look of relief on her face when he comes back (though he _should_ , he should miss it because it doesn’t mean anything).

She takes the water with nod and a small smile and drinks greedily, then offers some to him. As much as wants to keep the taste of her on his tongue, he feels like he’s run a mile so he accepts. There’s a moment when they just sit there, watching each other, gauging what the other wants.

Jyn’s eyes dip down to his cock resting on his stomach, leaking and flushed an angry dark red. She makes a hungry little noise and licks her lips and Cassian’s eyes almost roll back into his head, mind running over every arcane piece of music theory he knows just to keep from coming.

He can’t believe he’s saying this but he can’t stand the idea of her fucking him because she feels obliged. ‘We don’t have to do anything else.’

Jyn smiles, one of the rare, full ones that make him feel like his heart’s going to burst. She looks at him with an all too familiar expression, an almost exasperated fondness. ‘I know.’

 

She gets up and offers him a hand before leading him to the bedroom where she pushes him to sit on the bed then turns to his bedside table. ‘Second drawer still?’

He nods and she retrieves a condom and the bottle of lube. She unwraps the condom and puts a little dab inside before giving it to him.They’d discovered that trick in their second year together. People like to say they ‘experiment’ in college but Jyn was actually scientific about it, testing some new, wicked idea then demanding his full and honest opinion about how it felt. He remembers the delighted, vindicated look that would cross her face whenever one of her ideas worked.

It feels strange to think that their relationship was once that simple, when now he can’t be sure of a single thought running through her head, except that she wants to fuck him. Well, Cassian’s always been a person who works with what he’s got.He rolls the condom on and completely fails to hold back the almost violent gasp at her now wet hands running up and down his cock. It’s the first time someone’s touched him there in a longer time than he’s willing to admit.

Her other hand moves to his shoulder, gentling him. She tilts his head up to meet her gaze, looking him directly in the eyes for the first time since she came back. Her changeable eyes are almost grey in the low light coming from the hall and they’re soft when she asks, ‘Do _you_ want this Cassian?’

He almost hates her for asking, for the concern in her voice. If he means nothing to her, he wishes she’d act like it. Because as it is, he can feel treacherous hope growing in him and he knows he won’t survive it being dashed a second time.

She strokes his face. ‘Cassian?’

He thinks of the answer to her question, _Yes. Always. So much I can’t breathe. So much that I’m afraid of what I’d give, of how long I’d wait to have it again._ He doesn’t say that, only nods.

Jyn immediately straddles him, rocking against him once, twice, before sinking down onto his cock.

They both freeze, overwhelmed. He remembers the last time they did this, the night before she left on tour. She was on top of him like this then too, both so desperate to be as close as possible. She held him like she loved him, like he was precious to her, teary but still trying to make him smile.

This Jyn is leaning back, watching his face warily. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for and doesn’t want to know how she feels about what she’ll find, so he tugs her forward, hiding his face in her shoulder.

She starts to move then, and he can’t help but move with her. They’ve always been good at this, matching each other’s rhythm. It’s why they play so well together.

She feels like heaven around him, clenching in time with their thrusts and Cassian gratefully allows himself to get lost in the pleasure. He can feel her heartbeat against his chest, pounding and racing in synch with his own. Their breaths are synced up as well, hitching and heavy. Jyn’s nails bite into his skin as she grasps his back and he allows his teeth to graze the skin of her neck, relishing the gasp he pulls out of her.

His stomach tightens and the inexorable pull starts to build and build. A wave of panic washes over him. If this really is the last time, then he’s not ready for it to be over. He tries to commit every detail to memory, to be recalled and relived over and over again when he’s back in this bed alone.

Jyn’s clenching around him has sped up and lost its rhythm and he knows she’s close, but he’s much closer. He tucks his face tighter into her neck and allows himself one moment to feel the full depth of his love for her, pressing desperate kisses into her skin.

He can’t help the broken sob of her name that escapes him as he comes, and that sends her over the edge too. Pleasure and heartache race through his body in equal measure, leaving him feeling torn open and vulnerable. Her cheek is wet where it presses against his neck but that could just as easily be sweat as tears.

They cling to each other as their bodies calm. Cassian waits for Jyn to pull away and grab her clothes but she stays in his arms, pressing as much of her skin to his as she can and seeming to bask in the contact like she’s been starving for it. He wonders if anyone has held her like this since she left or if she’s been alone all this time. He doesn’t like the thought of her moving between anonymous hotel rooms and concert halls without anyone who cared for her mind and heart more than her hands. Even if she did bring it on herself.

After a moment, he eases out of her and tries not to melt at the small disgruntled noise she makes.

They get up and take turns washing. Cassian braces for the inevitable moment when Jyn will leave but it never comes. She just steals his toothbrush and then one of his shirts before climbing back into his bed.

For a second, it’s like he’s travelled back in time and the pang of longing for what they used to have hits him like a punch in the gut.

She’s facing the wall, back to him and he mirrors her position when he gets into bed. All he wants to do is wrap himself around her but that seems beyond the level of intimacy Jyn would accept from her one-night stands or whatever he is to her now.

He tries to quieten his mind, which is racing with a mess of joy, fear, anger and sheer confusion, as well as the vivid memories of the best sex he’s had in five years.

* * *

He’s been drifting for about an hour when he feels her shift and turn, her body moving to wrap itself around his. She moves slowly and steadily, like she’s approaching a dangerous animal, but eventually he’s completely enveloped in her. It takes everything he has not to tense up, knowing she’ll bolt if she thinks he’s awake.

She sighs and her body relaxes, her head nuzzling into his shoulder. It should feel strange, her doing this, but the warm weight of her behind him is so comforting and familiar that his mind calms and his eyes grow heavy with sleep. The last thing he’s aware of is the brush of her lips against the back of his neck.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you go! Sort of a happy ending right? I was going to put another cliffhanger there but I thought Luce might kill me so you can all thank her for that.


	4. the argument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he wakes up, she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full credit goes to the lovely genius RapidashPatronus for the Kay as 'Que?' idea, thanks so much for letting me run with it.

When he wakes up, she’s gone. He doesn’t know what else he was expecting, but it still hurts. He drops his head back down to the pillow, breathing in the scent of her, the only evidence she was there at all. Eventually, he pulls himself out of bed, gets dressed and goes out to the living room. He finds his cat, Kay 2, curled up on the couch asleep, his black fur gleaming in the morning sun. Kay 2 usually spends his nights prowling his old stomping grounds before coming home to sleep and vaguely disturb Cassian’s neighbours and passersby by staring at them unblinkingly from the window. 

He used to be a stray before Rodrigo found him and brought him to Cassian’s. Rodrigo had originally named the cat ‘¿Qué?’ as an encouragement for Cassian to always ask questions and had called him by that name enough times in the half hour bike ride to Cassian’s apartment that he responded to it (and still did, ears perking up every five seconds whenever Cassian spoke Spanish). Happily though, _Qué_ had the same brand of grumpy loyalty as Cassian’s similarly named best friend from college and thus became Kay 2. 

Looking at his phone, he sees that said best friend is due to call for their rigidly scheduled weekly chat in precisely 37 minutes. In the meantime, Cassian makes himself breakfast and tries to ignore the memories of last night, the salt sweet taste of her, the feel of her hot and slick around him, the almost wild sound she made when she came, that come in flashes every time he closes his eyes. 

Kay calls right on time, just like he has for the past six years. He gives Cassian the latest updates on Iamus, the classical music composing computer cluster that Kay has been helping to program in Malaga. 

Not far into the conversation, Kay interrupts himself to say, ‘Cassian, something is wrong. All your responses have been three beats late. I assume this is due to the fact that Jyn Erso is playing Rachmaninoff with your orchestra.’

Cassian sighs, though part of it is out of fondness. Nothing ever slips past Kay. ‘Yes.’ 

‘Cassian, you are not to have contact with her. She has treated you very poorly and the probability of her doing so again is very high.’ 

There’s something sweet about the warning, even if it comes too late. From almost the moment they met on the first day of college, Kay has taken an earnest and dogged interest in Cassian’s wellbeing. Jyn told him once that she and Kay’s first interaction consisted of him scolding her for making Cassian late to class. He’s not sure he’s really earned Kay’s devotion, but he’s grateful he has it.

‘It, uh, it’s a bit late for that.’

Kay is silent for a moment. ‘I see. That was… inadvisable, Cassian. You have to be more careful with yourself. What happened?’

‘She came over last night and we…’ Cassian has absolutely no idea which words he’d use to describe it. Everything that comes to mind means too much or not enough.

‘-Engaged in intercourse, I understand. Did she give an explanation as to why she left?’

‘No, we didn’t really talk much.’ Or at all, he thinks, apart from fervent whispers of each other’s names. 

Kay sighs in exasperation. ‘Jyn Erso avoiding conversation? Astonishing.’ He pauses. ‘You must demand an explanation. It is the only way you will find closure and finally move on.’

The almost violent way Cassian’s heart tightens at the idea of no longer loving Jyn is probably evidence that it’s not going to be that easy, but he can’t help but agree with Kay. Jyn left him behind with nothing but questions, and he needs answers.

He spends the rest of the morning practising, there’s a bit of fingerwork in Variation X that tends to trip him up if he’s not careful. At that evening’s dress rehearsal, he keeps furtively looking over at Jyn to find her eyes glancing off him. He has no clue how to begin the conversation they need to have but he resolves to try and catch her before she leaves.

Rodrigo’s in as foul a mood as he ever gets, he looks like he hasn’t been sleeping and apparently members of the board have been pressuring Gloria to replace him if this concert goes badly. This means that he keeps the orchestra back after they’ve run through the program, going over and over tiny flaws that only Rodrigo’s prodigious ears could possibly notice. By the end, Cassian is exhausted and sore and Jyn is long gone. He declines Cyn and Christophe’s invitation to go for a drink and instead heads home.

Kay 2 has yet to leave for his nighttime prowl and obligingly sits on Cassian’s lap and allows himself to be stroked for a whole half hour before his impatient claws start digging into Cassian’s legs.

After Kay 2 leaves, Cassian goes and lies on his bed. It still smells like them and the memories he’s been trying to ignore all day come rushing back in vivid detail. His head and heart ache with confusion. He _should_ want to move on from Jyn and God knows he’s tried over the years, but something seems incomprehensible and wrong about the idea that he might one day think of her as nothing more than the woman he dated in college. She feels so much more fundamental to his life than that. Still, does that mean when she leaves, which of course she will, that he’s doomed to be lonely for the rest of his life, to come home to nothing but a cat and a viola?

His musings are interrupted by a knock on the door and part of him is barely surprised to find Jyn on the other side. She shrugs almost apologetically, that same air of vulnerability gracing her otherwise stoic features.

Cassian closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the door. He can practically hear Kay’s disappointed voice as he lets her in. They have to talk, he knows that, but it’s late and he’s so tired and last night, wrapped in her arms, was the best night’s sleep he’s had in years.

He nods his head towards the bedroom and Jyn follows. They lie down on the bed and their lips find each other’s in almost complete synchronicity. He melts into her, letting everything but the hazy pleasure drift out of his mind. She seems to know what he needs and she stays gentle with him, hands running through his hair and under his shirt in smooth, comforting strokes.

They slowly remove their clothes, seeking out more soft, warm skin, but they don’t do anything other than kiss, lazy and languid, until their eyelids grow heavy. Cassian drifts to sleep with Jyn’s head tucked against his chest and promises himself he’ll talk to her in the morning.

He wakes to the sound of Kay 2 hissing and Jyn swearing. He quickly pulls on pants before hurrying to the living room. Jyn is fully dressed and was obviously trying to sneak out before her path to the door was obstructed by his incensed cat. Cassian’s heart falls a little at that even though she did the exact same thing yesterday morning. _Christ_ , he’s like Charlie Brown with the fucking football. She turns to him, expression caught and uncomfortable. Kay 2 leaps in between them, claws out, protecting him from the perceived threat. Cassian quickly gathers the cat’s bristling body in his arms before he can put those claws to use. He shrugs apologetically at Jyn.

‘You met Kay 2?’

She huffs and snarks, ‘Charming.’ 

She eyes the door as if considering making a run for it and he’s suddenly furious. 

‘Really Jyn? You can’t even talk to me for a whole minute?’

Her jaw clenches, always quick to anger when she feels threatened. ‘You’ve been perfectly happy to not talk for the past two nights.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought you might owe me more than sneaking out of my apartment like I’m some one-night stand you’re ashamed of.’

‘I don’t owe you anything, Cassian.’ 

Her words are a lit match to kerosene and he almost sees red. He lets out a cynical laugh as he moves towards her. ‘Seriously? I can think of quite a few things you owe me. First of which would be an explanation for why you abandoned me at an airport and broke up with me via a fucking text message.’

Jyn drops her head so he can’t read her expression but her hands start fidgeting, which she only does when she’s nervous. 

‘That was a long time ago. I would have thought you’d have moved on.’ There’s not a drop of sincerity in her voice. He knows this Jyn, knows the shield of apathy she dons to avoid ever talking about her feelings.

‘How could I move on when I had no idea why you left?’ He’s yelling now and it feels almost good. ‘You never even said goodbye!’

‘I couldn’t! I _can’t._ ’ It’s a choked off cry that seems to have revealed more than she wanted.

‘Why not?’ His voice is angry and urging at the same time. The prospect of an explanation pulls at him, so close after years of almost complete silence.

‘If I saw you-if I spoke to you, I couldn’t have left and I _had to_.’ The words are clipped and almost rote, as if she’s had to repeat them to herself. She keeps her head down, still wringing her hands. ‘I spent two hours trying to force myself to go out and end it, but I-’ She shrugs, ashamed, but it’s not enough. The knowledge that she was in the same building while he was losing his mind is a shot of fresh pain to a wound long scabbed over. He closes his eyes and takes a few long, deep breaths, refusing to let himself relive one of the worst nights of his life.

‘So why did you _have_ to leave?’ All the possible explanations he’s come up with, that she met someone else, that she outgrew him, that she never loved him to begin with, race through his mind as if vying for their chance to become real. ‘I mean God Jyn, what the fuck could I have done-’

‘-You were going to leave!’ She’s finally as angry as him, eyes accusatory as they finally meet his.

It’s like she’s speaking another language. He’s so completely floored that it takes him a minute to be able to utter, ‘ _What?’_

‘That phone-call- I could hear it in your voice. It was like you finally realised what our lives were going to be like.’ She collects herself, tries to reconstruct her composure. ‘Did you know that Han and Leia are getting divorced?’

The abrupt change of subject puts him off guard. ‘Yes, but what does that have to do with-’

She cuts him off, ‘Can you think of a single pair of musicians in a functional relationship?’

Cassian thinks of the disaster that is Rodrigo and Ana Maria’s marriage, of Warren and Bob, both divorced, of Betty Cragdale and her three broken engagements. 

Jyn takes his silence as a concession. ‘This life we lead, it’s hard, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that people don’t stick around when things get hard. You would have wanted to leave eventually, I was just saving you the trouble.’ 

So, there it is. For years he was sure that all he wanted from her was an explanation. Now that he has it though, he realizes that some naive part of him was still hoping for one where she never intended to leave him at all, where she was kidnapped or developed amnesia or had been writing him love letters every day that she sent to the wrong address. To hear her admit that she chose to do this kills that part of him and even though it should have died five years ago, it still hurts. 

‘So you’re telling me you broke my heart to help _me_?’ He scoffs. ‘Be honest Jyn, you ran to save yourself,’ he lines up his next words like a sniper scoping a shot, ‘and you abandoned me exactly the way your father abandoned you.’

It’s a precise and devastating blow and that bitter part of Cassian relishes the way Jyn’s expression crumbles, her lip trembling and eyes blinking back tears before she shoves it away. 

He continues, voice cold, ‘And the worst thing is that you did it all for nothing because I would _never_ have left you.’

Her indifferent mask cracks as she snaps, ‘You can’t know that. You would have wanted out and you would have been right to. I meant it when I said you deserved better.’

The reference to her text has him scowling. ‘When you _said_?’

She looks down, but doesn’t get distracted. ‘Cassian, I know what it’s like to have someone you lo-’ her eyes flash to his then away, her words coming faster and harder as decades-old pain fills her voice, ‘-care about always leaving you, to be always waiting, counting down days, being disappointed over and over again when there’s always just one more concert and then resenting them for it despite yourself. Do you know how many times I wished I could be someone else’s daughter?’

He hates thinking about Jyn’s childhood, hates the violent ache in his chest whenever he pictures that lonely little girl feeling so unloved, but she doesn’t have the monopoly on painful pasts. ‘Probably as many times as I wished I could be someone’s son. You were my family Jyn, how could you think I’d give that up?’ Part of him shies away from baring so much of his heart, but surely she knows what she is to him.

She’s silent for a moment and when she speaks again, her voice is smaller, resigned, ‘I wasn’t enough to keep my own father around and I was his only child. How could I trust that I’d be enough for you when I was just a college girlfriend you’d only see for half the year?’ 

He grits his teeth. Her logic, though wildly flawed, is at least internally consistent. Still, she’s speaking like their relationship wasn’t the deepest and closest connection he’s ever had to another person in his life. ‘Maybe that’s all it was to you, but I’ve never loved anyone like I loved you. I would have taken any time we had.’ Only his pride keeps him from using the present tense. ‘Even if you didn’t feel the same, you should have told me.’ 

She lets out a small wounded sound, her nails digging into her palms. ‘I _did_ feel the same. And it was just _so much_ that it terrified me because I could never believe you were in as deep.’

The idea that _he_ was the one less invested in their relationship is so ridiculous he has to laugh, an ugly, choked thing that sounds dangerously close to a sob. ‘How could you think I didn’t feel the same, Jyn? I was so obvious.’

She shakes her head violently. ‘You weren’t, Cassian. God, there were so many times when your face was a stone wall. I had no _idea_ what you were thinking.’

His heart breaks just that little bit further. He fell so hard and so fast for her, was always so self-conscious of himself and his feelings around her, he just assumed that she could tell exactly how he felt, that everybody could. He lets out a sigh and realises his body is shaking, wrecked and wrung out. He sinks down to the couch and rests his head in his hands. ‘Well Jyn, I’m still in love with you five years after you left me and ripped my heart out, so believe me, I was in that deep.’

She stays silent and he doesn’t look up to see how she reacts to his confession, too afraid that she’ll have no reaction at all.

He lets the bitter part of himself take over. ‘So why did you come here, Jyn? Did you just want to make sure that I never get over you or was I just a convenient and willing fuck for while you’re in town?’

‘ _No._ ’ She sounds horrified. ‘No. I took Rodrigo’s offer to just see you again, but then I found out you weren’t still with Cynthia and I missed you so much, I-’

He looks up. ‘-Wait. How do you know about Cynthia and me?’ Neither he nor Cynth had ever told anybody about that aspect of their friendship, knowing their friends would make a bigger deal out of it than it was.

Jyn shrugs. ‘About nine months after I left, I thought I’d made a mistake.’ She ducks her head shyly. ‘I missed you like crazy and I was so miserable…’ her voice wavers for a moment. ‘I went to your apartment one night but before I crossed the street I saw Cynthia leaving.’ There’s pain in her voice that shouldn’t tug at him but does. ‘I realised then that I was right, that you would want, that you’d _deserve,_ someone like her, who could be there for you like I couldn’t and you’d go off and be happy and have babies with insane cheekbones.’ She bites her lip and angrily brushes her eye. 

‘Me and Cyn, it was never like that.’ He doesn’t know why he’s telling her this, it’s not like she has any right to be upset, but it seems important that she know.

‘I know, she told me, after yelling at me for five straight minutes.’ She says this a little wryly.

He remembers them coming out of the bathroom together, how Jyn had seemed at once chastened and hopeful. ‘You deserved it.’ He means it but he lets some of her wryness lace his tone.

She nods, face serious. ‘I did. She’s a good friend, I’m glad you had her.’

‘Me too.’ He huffs a small laugh. ‘You know, if you hadn’t broken my heart so thoroughly, Cyn and I would never have gotten so close, so thank you for that.’

Her lips twist in a broken smile, hurt flashing across her face. 

Silence drags thick between them, interrupted by a knock on the door and Rodrigo shouting something incoherent but very definitely rude about Edward Biben in Spanish. 

Cassian rushes to let him in and shut him up before he wakes anyone else up. ‘What is wrong with you? Mrs Walter is already racist enough.’ 

He looks at his friend, takes in the rumpled clothes he was wearing yesterday and the bleary, wide eyes. On mornings like these, when the city streets aren’t enough to calm Rodrigo’s racing mind, he comes here, needing a quiet place with someone to keep him from drowning in his constant eddies of thought. 

Cassian directs him to the couch, where he immediately curls up but not without noticing the third person in the room. ‘Hey, Jyn! Everybody’s here.’ K2 jumps onto his chest and starts purring. _'Y mi gato preferido! ¿Cómo estás Qué?' _

Jyn looks caught in the same emotional whiplash Cassian feels. She clears her throat. ‘Good morning.’ To Cassian she says, ‘I should go.’

Cassian doesn’t want her to leave when everything’s so strained and uncertain between them, but nothing is going to get fixed this morning. He nods and she puts on her jacket, heading for the door.

Before she can leave, Rodrigo calls out from the couch, voice unusually earnest, ‘Jyn, you have to treat him well.’

Jyn stops and turns toward Cassian as she answers, ‘I know. I’m trying to start, Maestro.’ Then she nods and steps through the door. The quiet snick of it closing behind her echoes as Cassian tries to muddle through the wave of emotions that crashes over him at her words.

_'¿Estás bien, hermanito?' _

He shakes his head. _'No tengo ninguna idea' _

Still, despite how angry he is with her, angrier than he’s been in a long time, his chest feels lighter than it has since she left. There’s the heady relief of getting everything out in the open, of finally understanding her. It’s like a misaligned bone has been rebroken and though it hurts in the moment, it just might let them heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone on mobile, the Spanish translations are:  
> -'And my favourite cat! How are you What?'  
> -'Are you okay little brother?'  
> -'I have no idea.'  
> Music notes:  
> -Cassian references Variation X of the Enigma Variations, 'Dorabella'
> 
> This marks the peak angst of this story, everything's going to get happier from now on, I promise you.  
> Shoutout to Amanda on Twitter, I know I took an age with this update but I sincerely hope you avoided a mental breakdown and I hope you liked the chapter ;)


	5. pas encore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's quite a few references to 'Poco a poco' in this chapter, so I do recommend a cheeky read/reread if you haven't recently.

After Jyn leaves, Rodrigo goes into caretaker mode, settling Cassian on an armchair and making him a cup of coffee. He tells him all about how Betty Cragdale cruelly dashed all Hailey’s hopes of playing in an orchestra and so now he’s sending Betty to New Jersey to give Hailey the chance to play tonight, as if that’s the rational response any conductor would have. Cassian makes some vague protests but he doesn’t try that hard. Betty really can be a bitch sometimes and Christine is more than capable of playing first chair. That and he has no hope in hell of convincing Rodrigo once he’s made up his mind.

The crazy scheme manages to get his mind off the whirring mess of thought and emotion Jyn left in her wake and he determinedly shoves that into a box in his mind, to be opened only after they all pull off tonight's concert.

Rodrigo’s sleepless night catches up with him after a while, so Cassian gets out his viola and plays the calmest parts of the program to help him sleep then moves to his bedroom to practise the rest.

By lunchtime, his hands and mind both need a break so he sits in a sun-soaked corner with K2 curled on his lap and reads. He almost manages not to think about Jyn at all.

Rodrigo wakes up and heads home to change for the performance but not before hugging Cassian for five whole minutes. Cassian submits to this only because he knows Rodrigo’s nervous about tonight and probably needs the hug too.

 

He showers and gets ready, putting on his tux and telling himself that if he spends a little more time on his hair than usual, then it’s only because it’s opening night. The car Rodrigo sent is waiting and Cassian makes small talk with the driver to distract himself from the nerves that still hit him when he hasn’t performed in a while. He heads through the stage door and spends the half hour before the performance chatting with Cyn while his left hand practises fingerings on his thigh. 

His breath catches when he sees Jyn. He hasn’t seen her in a dress since they graduated. In all of her performances he’s watched, she was always wearing a suit. Now she’s in a long, black dress, simply cut but still devastating as it clings to her curves. Cassian finds himself annoyed by how beautiful she is, how his eyes can’t help but follow her even though he’s still more than a little angry with her. She’s vibrant, alive in a way she only gets before a performance, adrenaline rushing through her veins and seeming to bypass nerves entirely, something Cassian’s always envied.

She scans the room until she finds him, then comes over, the grace of her body as she moves unfairly captivating.

He greets her with a slightly cautious nod. ‘Jyn.’

‘Cassian.’ He doesn’t miss the way her eyes sweep over him in appreciation and there’s a shivery, shy tension in the air, even with everything else between them. ‘You look good.’ She says it as if she can’t help it and the compliment glows warm in his stomach despite himself.

‘So do you.’ It comes out of him in a rush, too sincere, so he tempers it with a wry, ‘I can’t believe you’re in a dress without Mon Mothma to force you.’

She ducks her head and flushes. ‘Yeah, it was a bit of an impulse purchase.’ There’s a pause before she bites her full, blood-red lip, takes a deep breath and blurts, ‘I’m sorry.’

He blinks. He can’t remember the last time Jyn actually said those words. Whenever she was apologetic before, she would always show it in other ways: a rueful look, a tender touch or simply a quiet rectification of whatever she’d done wrong.

She continues, ‘I should have said it this morning, I should have said it five years ago, I should have…’ She sets her shoulders and looks him directly in the eye. ‘I should never have left. It was the biggest mistake of my life and I have regretted it every day since.’

It’s almost everything he’s longed to hear from her for so long and it leaves him speechless. He’s still angry with her but she’s gorgeous and she’s here and she’s Jyn and _fuck_ he loves her, above all else. The orchestra is starting to filter onto the stage and he should really go but he can’t walk away without saying anything.

The only thing that really comes to mind is a question he’s had since Rodrigo told him what she was playing. ‘Jyn, why the Rachmaninoff?’

She looks a little taken aback by the non sequitur but she answers readily, lips twisting into a soft, sad smile, ‘The Second Movement’s what I play when I think about you.’

That leaves him even more floored than before. He stares at her until David, his first chair, shoots a brusque, ‘Time to go, Andor,’ as he stalks past them towards the stage.

Jyn gently takes his hand and brings it to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles that sends shivers racing across his skin and whispering, ‘Good luck.’

His heart seizes and he barely has the wherewithal to say, ‘You too,’ before stepping out on stage.

He makes his way to his seat as if on autopilot but as he starts tuning, the world slowly rushes back in and he’s able to focus on the job he has to do tonight. Jyn and Rodrigo come out to a standing ovation and Cassian feels a rush of pride at seeing her take her place at the piano, at the front of the stage where she belongs.

 

The First Movement goes by with that particular tension of an audience deciding whether what they’re listening to is any good. He feels the fate of the orchestra resting in the balance and he can tell from the slight tightness of Rodrigo’s shoulders that he feels it too. However, Jyn is too talented for that tension to last for long and she brings the orchestra with her. The boisterous applause at the end of the movement brings a wild grin to Rodrigo’s face and Cassian settles into that incomparable rush of playing with an audience hanging on every note.

Then comes the Second Movement, now imbued with so much more meaning to him. It starts with a chord modulation for the strings and Cassian leans into the crescendo drawing them to the new key. He briefly glances away from Rodrigo’s baton to see Jyn watching him, face soft and open. Their eyes meet and she nods at him before beginning to play. It’s… _exquisite._ The tender, achingly beautiful theme washes over him like warm water, flowing like honey. Jyn plays with such feeling, colouring every note with a yearning that finds its echo inside his chest. He almost can’t take his eyes off her, and doesn’t except for the brief glances back to Rodrigo every so often. Cassian plays without thinking. He’s in that perfect place where it’s as easy as breathing. His heart swells with the ebb and flow of the cadenza as it builds towards its climax and stays full through to the end, smiling and blinking away tears as they play the sublime coda. The audience applauds and it’s like coming out of a trance. He’s surprised to find other people in the room with them. Jyn meets his gaze again and she smiles, full and wide, her eyes crinkling around the edges. He can’t help but smile back. It’s the happiest he’s been in years, doing what he was always meant to do and in spite of it all, still connected to this woman he so fiercely loves.

He floats through the rest of the performance. It’s nights like this that make every minute of the interminable hours of practice worth it. It’s love and beauty and religion all tied together. Only Jyn could ever make him feel as much and with her here, he’s bursting with it. The final, resounding chord of the Enigma Variations plays and Cassian feels suddenly bereft, as if he could play another ten concerts and still not be satisfied.

The audience leaps to their feet (which is impressive for a bunch of octogenarians) and erupts into thunderous applause. He joins in, clapping for Rodrigo and Jyn and his fellow orchestra members. It was a brilliant concert, their best in a long while and a resounding vindication for Rodrigo. A wave of the usual post-performance adrenaline amplified by success rolls through the orchestra as they make their way backstage.

 

They’re serving champagne for orchestra members and guests and the atmosphere is pure elation. Cassian looks around to see Hailey and Rodrigo kissing. There’s an expression of shocked awe on Rodrigo’s face like he’s only just realised he’s attracted to her. Cassian rolls his eyes, having called that one ages ago.

When Jyn appears, she immediately draws his attention. She glows, nodding politely as she’s profusely congratulated by everyone she passes. People flock to her, all desperate to talk to the star of the evening, to be in her orbit, to somehow feel like they’re part of the show. He understands them, feels the pull himself, the memory of the sheer virtuosity of her playing superimposed over his vision of her. He remembers that Jyn hates it though, all the people expecting small talk and at least feigned interest in their various young relations all studying piano and apparently all equally deserving of a leg up from someone who’s never met them.

Her eyes scan the crowd and stop when they meet his. She smiles at him, small and shy. He raises his glass in return, unsure of what else to do on this new ground where they now stand.

Slowly, with a few lengthy interruptions, she makes her way over to him. All of the nerves that she avoided before the performance seem to take hold of her now and she looks shy and vulnerable in a way she almost never does.

‘Do you want to get out of here?’ She says it like she’s expecting him to reject her and he briefly considers it. Cynth, Didi and Christophe are waving him over to head off for their usual post-concert drinks and that honestly seems like a less emotionally draining way to spend his evening.

But Jyn Erso is asking him to follow her, and he’s still not sure how to say no.

He waves at his friends, tries to ignore the look Cynth gives him, somehow warning and encouraging at the same time.

 

Cassian grabs his viola and they head outside. It’s a warm night, a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the trees that line the streets, providing a soothing soundtrack to the easy silence that stretches between them. Wordlessly passing his viola to Jyn, he takes off his jacket and bow tie, opening the first few buttons of his shirt to cool off a little. He reaches out a hand to take back his instrument but she just shakes her head.

‘It’s okay, I can carry her.’

They walk silently up Waverly Place until they reach Washington Square Park, then find a quiet bench among the lit-up trees. He waits for Jyn to speak, knowing she’ll need a minute to gather and weigh her words.

When it comes, her voice is gentle and earnest,‘Cassian, what do you want?’

He sighs, unable to find an answer that captures the roiling, conflicting mass of what he wants. He wants her to never have left, to never have hurt him. He wants to be to angrier than he is, to harden his heart and protect himself. He wants her to come back, to stay, to love him. The desire to forget everything and take her into his arms is almost excruciating. But the truth is that he doesn’t trust her to do any of those things, not really. Not yet. He gives her the only answer that feels true. ‘I don’t know, Jyn.’

Jyn nods, crestfallen. ‘That’s okay.’ There’s a long pause. ‘Can I tell you what I want?’

He nods.

‘I want you to know how sorry I am, and that even though I fucked everything up, I still love you so much.’ Her voice breaks and Cassian’s sure he can feel his heart both breaking and burning along with it. ‘And maybe one day, if you wanted me to, I’d like to come home.’

He says nothing, speechless. He thinks about how easy it would be to say yes. He wants to, desperately; he can practically taste the sweetness of the smile she’d press into his lips. But there’s a voice in his head, vulnerable and hurt and wary, that warns him against it like it’s the edge of a cliff he’s about to trip over. It paints a picture of what he’d be like if they were to fall straight back into a relationship, always terrified of her leaving again, caught between his lingering anger and a desperate desire to please her so that she’d stay. It would be impossible to build a healthy relationship on that and if they ever do get back together, he wants it to last. It’s that voice that says, ‘I don’t think I’m ready for that, Jyn. Not yet at least.’

Her whole body sinks for a moment but she rallies, determined. ‘Of course. I understand. I just wanted you to know.’ She springs up from the bench and he can see from the tension in her muscles how much she wants to run. He watches as she fights the impulse, taking a few deep breaths and turning to him. ‘Will you still walk me home?’

He rises, taking his viola, and offers her his hand. She takes it instantly and flashes him a quick, relieved smile. Hope, fragile yet undeniably alive, hovers in the air between them.

 

They head deeper into the park until they reach its iconic arch, glowing white against the city skyline. The mist from the huge fountain is blessedly cool against Cassian’s face. There’s a piano, one of the brightly painted uprights meant for the public, and Jyn starts towards it.

‘Will you play with me, Cassian?’

He nods and gets his viola out, quickly tuning it. He’s missed almost everything about Jyn, but playing with her is definitely near the top of the list. Neither of them are brilliant at communication, but they’ve always been able to speak better through music. ‘What do you want to play?’

‘The Brahms?’

Air hisses through his teeth at that. She couldn’t have chosen a more emotionally loaded piece for him. He almosts suggests something else, but decides that a revisit to that giddy and golden first part of their relationship might be good for both of them.

He fits his viola under his chin and raises his bow. With a shared breath, he starts to play and Jyn comes in right on time, just as she’s always done since that very first rehearsal. He remembers how hard he tried to impress her that day, the gorgeous, grumpy child prodigy with eyes that would have knocked him over had the rest of her not done so first.

His body plays without much input from his mind. This piece has been ingrained in his muscle memory for years, which is good because otherwise he wouldn’t have a hope of remembering it, given that he hasn’t been able to play or listen to it since Jyn left. He's resented her for that, has regretted ever deciding to play it with her, because the piece is also one of the strongest connections he has to his mother.

Now, the memories of both women flow strong in his mind. Sitting snuggled on his father’s lap as they listened to his mother play, performing with Jyn for that first recital and realising just how easy it would be to fall in love with her. Part of him wishes he could go back in time and warn himself that once he fell, it would be impossible to get back out, no matter how hard he tried, but he still can’t regret loving Jyn. The four years they spent together were the happiest he’s ever been and the possibility of finding their way back to that place, even if he can’t quite see the path, buoys him just as much as the joy of playing together again. They finish the first movement and are greeted with an enthusiastic round of applause from the small crowd who have gathered around them.

Jyn turns to him with a smile and it takes everything in him not to lean down and kiss her. Instead, he smiles back and she brightens even more. They both do a bashful little bow for their audience.

‘Do you want to do the rest?’ There’s a little bit of pleading in her eyes and Cassian understands the desire to have this night last a bit longer when their future together is still so uncertain.

He quirks his lips. ‘Only if you don’t rush the Third Movement.’

‘You mean, only if I play it at a glacial speed like you?’

Cassian rolls his eyes and lifts his bow. For all her sass, Jyn gives him exactly the tempo he prefers for the last movement. They both hold the final note a little longer than necessary and it echoes in the air before their audience, most of whom had found seats on the edge of the fountain or even just straight on the ground, stand up and cheer. Cassian smiles at them and dips his head before starting to pack up his viola. Jyn runs her hands affectionately along the keys before rising to join him.

 

Her hotel is just a block and a half away so it’s not long before they’re standing in front of it, facing the decision of where to go from here.

Jyn bites her lip and shrugs. ‘I don’t suppose you want to come up?’

He gives a short, sad laugh. ‘Of course I do. But we shouldn’t.’

‘Right.’ She ducks her head but he still catches the hurt and disappointment on her face and has to practically bite his tongue to stop himself changing his mind.

Silence hangs over them. Cassian can’t leave her, not like this, but he’s not sure what kind of closure they can find tonight. She’s probably leaving the country in a few days to continue her tour. He realises with a start that he doesn’t even know where she’s living now, though he imagines it’s still in the UK. He asks, ‘When are you leaving New York?’

‘Tomorrow.’ Her voice is apologetic. She adds, rushed and reckless, ‘I could stay though, if you wanted.’

He’s not sure how serious she is and either way her manager would kill her if she tried, but he appreciates the offer all the same. ‘No, that’s okay. How long’s your tour?’

‘Two more months.’ She pauses. ‘Maybe I could call you sometimes? Do you still have the same number?’

‘Yeah, I do, and ... that would be good.’ This is probably exactly what he needs. He knows himself well enough to recognise how easily he’d let her in before he was ready if they were in the same city.

She smiles. ‘Okay, I can do that.’

The silence settles in again but it’s more comfortable this time.

Jyn steps towards him, cautiously, giving him plenty of time to step away, then leans up and presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. ‘I love you. So much.’

He brushes his lips to her forehead. ‘Me too.’

She’s resolute as she looks up at him. ‘I’m going to earn that again, Cassian. I swear to you.’ Her voice is as serious as he’s ever heard it.

It’s too much. He wants to kiss her so badly, he wants to have forgiven her and learnt to trust her and be ready for her again, to take her home and spend the next two months in bed with her instead of miles apart.

 _Not yet_.

He steps away from her and it feels like fighting a current. ‘Goodbye, Jyn.’

She gives him one last smile and her expression is completely open. His own emotions, a bittersweet mix of yearning, heartache and hope, are clearly reflected on her face. ‘I’ll talk to you soon.’

He nods and starts walking away from her, part of him screaming at himself but mostly sure it’s the right decision. When he turns back onto Fifth Avenue, he sees her still standing there, watching him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't leave you without a little bit of angst. But I swear to god, this is the end of it! Happy days from here on out.  
> Music notes:  
> -Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto (with an emphasis on the Second Movement)  
> -Brahms' Sonata in E-Flat Major


	6. panic! at the airport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn and Cassian talk it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody look at when the last chapter was posted, I'm so ashamed. 
> 
> There are a few references here to [intermezzo](%E2%80%9C15084650%E2%80%9D), the snippet of this chapter I posted in June. If you'd like to read it chronologically, it's set just after 'Kay 2 remains unamused'.  
> I thought I'd put the music references here, so you can listen along (especially to the Debussy because it's really quite gorgeous).  
> -La Campanella by Liszt  
> -Reverie by Debussy

Cassian spends most of the next day trying to reassure himself that the past week wasn’t just the combined product of his imagination and too much mezcal. In the afternoon, he looks down to see an unknown number flash across his screen and feels an almost adolescent giddiness as he answers, making sure to keep his tone somewhat professional in case it’s not her.

‘Cassian?’ There’s something off in her voice, panicked and trembling just under the surface.

‘Jyn, what’s wrong?’ Any excitement has soured into dread.

Her first response comes out as fast as a reflex, ‘It’s no-’, but she cuts herself off. She takes a deep breath and says, ‘I’m flying out of that same fucking terminal at JFK and I just can’t stop thinking about it. All I wanted to do last time was to hear your voice, so…’ She sighs and it’s hitched and ragged. ‘I’m sorry, it feels wrong to ask you to comfort me about this.’

‘Oh.’ He can’t help but feel relieved, which is such a strange thing to feel in connection to any reminder of that night. Of course there’s a mess of much uglier emotion writhing underneath, small sparks of spite and schadenfreude, but they are mostly dampened by the pleased surprise that she told him at all. The Jyn that left him kept her panic under lock and key. She wouldn’t have called if she couldn’t keep her voice steady and she certainly wouldn’t have told him what was wrong. ‘No, I’m glad you called. I-’ He doesn’t know what to say. _It’s okay_ doesn’t work because it’s _not,_ but he wants to calm that shaking pain in her. He settles on, ‘I wanted to hear your voice too.’

Jyn’s quiet for a long moment, but he can hear her breathing slow. ‘Usually I couldn’t bear to think about it. When I did, I told myself that it couldn’t have hurt you as much as it hurt me because you didn’t care as much. It was the only way I could deal with the guilt. I don’t really know how to deal with it now.’

He wants so badly to offer her his forgiveness, but he’s not there yet. Still, the evidence in her voice of just how difficult and painful it was for her to leave acts as a balm to his still simmering anger. He’d been upset the other day when he found out she’d been at the airport the whole time, but surely this is better than if she’d been sitting in London, letting him go all the way to JFK and wait for hours before sending that text. It’s not okay, but it’s better. ‘I’m still not sure how to forgive you either, but I think we’ll get there. Just, don’t leave like that again.’

She lets out a sad little laugh. ‘The way I feel right now? I swear I’d tie myself to you for life if you’d let me.’

Cassian smiles, feeling the conversation settle and ease somewhat. He still wants to make her feel better, and while forgiveness might be beyond him for now, flirting he can do. ‘That might make for a refreshing change of pace. Normally I’m the one being tied up.’

He hears the delicious hitch of her breath as the image plays in her mind. She starts to speak then stops to listen to the announcement that the 3.30 flight to Boston is starting to board. ‘Oh, that’s me.’ She sighs. ‘Two months, Cass, then you can tie me to whatever you like.’

Where the tour had seemed like a good amount of breathing space last night, now the time seems to stretch out interminably before them. ‘Have a safe flight. Call me whenever.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, and I’m keeping this number for the whole tour so you can call me as well. I don’t care if I’m in the middle of a performance, if you call me, I’ll answer.’ She says it like an oath.

‘I think I might just download your tour schedule, but thank you. I’ll talk to you soon.’ The words slip out of his mouth and he realises that he believes them, unquestioningly. Jyn will call him tomorrow and he can call the day after that. It feels small compared to the valley of broken trust between them but still, it’s not nothing.

‘I love you, Cassian.’ She says it deliberately, so it can’t be mistaken for an easy, thoughtless farewell.

He mirrors her tone. ‘I love you, Jyn.’

After they hang up, he realises that they just made it through a conversation about some of their messiest emotions without either of them closing up. Hope, and that giddiness from earlier, spring up in him. Humming to himself, Cassian grabs his cat and hugs him close. Kay 2 is not amused.

 

They speak every day after that, taking turns to call each other until her tour takes her to Canada, where her plan makes it cheaper for her to call him. After the heaviness of their first conversation, they keep it relatively light, mostly talking about the other love of both their lives.

Jyn’s playing Liszt’s _La Campanella_ , as if her status as a prodigious freak of nature were not already clear to anyone who’s ever heard her play. Cassian’s hands hurt just thinking about it.

He tells her about the new joy and life that’s filled the orchestra since their concert. Now that the sharks have stopped circling for the moment, Rodrigo is back to his charmingly effervescent self and his job feels almost nothing like work.

When they’re not talking about music, they chat about old friends from college. He learns that Bodhi’s playing with the LSO and that Chirrut and Baze are still going strong back at Yavin. When she hears about Kay’s composing computer, she laughs. ‘I think Bodhi did one of its pieces. It’s… not terrible. Don't tell Kay I said that.’

Sometimes, they don’t even need to talk. They put each other on speaker phone and practise or read or watch something, making comments every now and then but mostly content to just exist in each other’s life.

 

About a week in, he passes Hailey in the corridor before rehearsal and greets her.

She startles. ‘Holy shit.’

He touches his face, checking if there’s something on it. ‘What?’

‘It’s just, I’ve never seen you smile like that before. You’re like, really fucking beautiful.’

He ducks his head and thanks her, pleased by the compliment but mostly by the reminder that he _is_ happy. The worries that sometimes gnaw away at him, whispering that he’s rushing this, that he’s setting himself up for heartbreak, can’t hold up to just how good and grounded Jyn makes him feel.

Cynthia notices as well. They talk about it over drinks and Cassian finds himself almost desperate for her approval. After all, she was the eyewitness to just how much Jyn hurt him.

‘Do you think I’m rushing into it?’

She takes the time to consider then shrugs. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, I’m hardly the best person to turn to for relationship advice. I do know that you’ve smiled more in the past week than in the last five years.’

‘C’mon, I wasn’t that bad.’

She somehow manages to roll her eyes kindly. ‘Darling, you were an utter mope.’

It’s true, and Cassian has to fight the pang of anxiety that things with Jyn won’t work out and that grey fog will descend again, even thicker than before.

Cynthia sees it in his face and takes his hand, squeezing it gently. ‘It’ll be fine. You’re both so obviously in love it’s painful and hey, she’s not even married to someone else.’

He gives her a sympathetic smile and squeezes back.

 

Cassian’s lounging on his couch one afternoon as he listens to Jyn play Debussy’s _Reverie,_ his book resting on the sleeping cat in his lap. He closes his eyes and imagines her here, imagines them both old and grey and still doing exactly this. It’s a future he used to envisage for himself when they were together, in a quiet place in his heart, and its’ loss was one of the hardest parts of her absence. Right now it feels tangible enough to taste. His daydreaming is rudely interrupted by the obnoxious trill of an incoming Facetime call on Jyn’s end. She stops playing and there’s the sound of her reaching over for her phone and rejecting the call before typing out a text.

‘Do you need to go?’

‘No, don’t worry. It was just my dad.’

He tenses, she seems calm enough but he remembers how stressed out she used to get when her father tried to call. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Oh, yeah, I’m fine. We’ve actually been talking quite a lot in the past few years.’

He can hear a smile in her voice and it sparks one of his own. ‘Oh, yeah?’

He’s only met Galen Erso once, at a workshop he gave at Yavin. Cassian felt like a bit of a traitor for going, but the opportunity to learn from one of the world’s best string players was too good to pass up. He remembers the way Galen had scanned the students and then kept glancing at the door, waiting around after the class for a good hour after it finished. He was obviously waiting for his daughter, and the sight had pulled at Cassian’s heart even as he thought of Jyn close to tears and shaking with anger after speaking to him. He still doesn’t know what to think about the man, but if Jyn’s happy about their reconciliation then so is Cassian.

‘Yeah. It’s probably the only good thing that came out of me leaving. It’s like you said, me and my father both abandoned people we love. It made me realise that you could leave someone and still love them.’ She pauses but Cassian waits for her to continue. Her voice has taken on the stilted quality that he’s come to recognise as her actively working to override her natural reserve. ‘And maybe, hopefully, leaving didn’t mean you were an awful person, just a scared idiot who made a mistake.’

‘You’re not an awful person, Jyn.’

‘But I am a scared idiot, is what you’re saying.’ Her tone is just wry enough to lighten the mood without feeling like a distraction.

‘Well, I wouldn’t use _quite_ that wording.’ He grows serious again. ‘I’m didn’t really mean what I said that morning. I’m glad for you that you’ve forgiven him, but what he did to you was worse than what you did, Jyn. You were a child who’d just lost her mother and I shouldn’t have diminished that just to score a point in an argument. I’m sorry.’

‘ _Cass._ ' There's a world of love in her voice. 'It’s okay. You were angry and you had every right to be. I’m sorry for how I acted that morning too, I shouldn’t have even tried to justify what I did. I just got defensive.’

He remembers having to pull a drunken Jyn away from a fistfight after she’d bumped into someone and they’d demanded an apology. ‘I know. I knew then as well. Part of me was probably grateful to have a reason to yell at you.’

‘Well then, you’re welcome. I’m still sorry though.’

Here he’s finally able to offer her some forgiveness. ‘It’s alright, Jyn.’

There’s a beat of silence before Kay 2 decides to wake up, toppling Cassian’s book on the floor as he stretches. He quickly proceeds to make it quite clear that he is hungry and would like for Cassian to deal with that situation immediately.

‘Time to go?’

‘Yeah, it’s only a matter of time before the claws come out over here. Tell your dad I said hello.’

‘I will. He likes you, you know. He remembers you from that masterclass, says you play with a lot of heart.’

Somewhere inside him, a Galen Erso fanboy is screaming, though not as loudly as his cat. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Jyn. I love you.’

‘I love you too. Don’t get eaten by your devil cat.’ She hangs up before Cassian can defend him. Now that Jyn’s off the phone, Kay 2 calms right down. Cassian rolls his eyes and feeds him. ‘You’re gonna have to get used to her, buddy.’

Kay 2 remains unamused.

 

Eleven days before Jyn comes back and Cassian can barely think of anything but their phone call last night. He has to rely completely on muscle memory to get him through rehearsal because his mind is full of Jyn’s voice, smooth and honey sweet, telling him how good he was for her. He feels marked, even though she never touched him, and he knows his cheeks flush every time someone looks at him. As he keeps thinking about it, his mind catches on something she said when he was hovering right on the edge, _I will take care of you, for the rest of our lives if you’ll let me._

When they were together before, discussions of the future were tacitly off limits. They moved in together because Jyn, with what he now realises was an air of forced casualness, had offered just as he was about to sign up to another year of student housing. Moving to New York had been smart for both of them and so never forced the discussion of whether they were willing to follow each other. But now, Jyn’s talking about the same kind of long-term that he’s been imagining with her.

As rehearsal ends, and he flushes again at Rodrigo’s raised eyebrow, Cassian walks home and turns the words over in his head. It could be that they were just a spur of the moment product of passion, but Jyn had been so deliberate, slowing everything down so he could hear it. Hope, bright and riotous, rises in him.

As soon as he gets home, he calls her.

‘I was just thinking about you.’ There’s a slight breathiness in her voice that tells him that she was just as affected by last night as he was.

‘I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I was a complete mess in rehearsal.’

‘Oh god, me too. The conductor asked me if I had a fever afterwards.’

The image of Jyn, so visibly flushed with thoughts of him, sends him breathless for a moment. ‘I swear, when you get home, we’re not leaving my bed for a week.’

‘That sounds right, because you’re not going to be able to walk, sweet boy.’ It’s the same voice she used last night and Cassian has to lean against the kitchen counter.

‘ _Fuck_ , I can’t even walk now.’

She giggles, delighted. The need to have her here, to be able to kiss that smile, pounds in his blood.

He manages to get over to the couch and remembers what he really wanted to talk to her about. ‘Jyn, did you really mean what you said last night, about the rest of our lives?’

There’s a sharp inhale followed by a pause that threatens to send his heart beating straight out of his chest. ‘I did.’ That comes out certain but anxiety threads through her voice as she continues, ‘I’m sorry. I know you said you’re not ready for a relationship and I don’t expect anything. I didn’t mean to push.’

It hits like a blow and a revelation, that she’s been living on the knife’s edge of a decision he already made without noticing. This is how it had happened, how they’d managed to feel exactly the same way for each other and still misunderstand the other so deeply. Between now and their conversation in the park, Cassian’s fear and anger ebbed, soothed by his happiness and the evidence of how hard Jyn’s worked to fix her mistakes. At some point, letting her all the way back into his life became inevitable, a choice so clear that he can’t really recall having made it.

It happened the same way last time, their shared future slowly stretching out in his mind until it became endless. He naively assumed that future would just happen, as easily and as inexorably as he’d fallen in love with her. Jyn’s silence on the subject was a sign that she wasn’t quite there yet. Hadn’t he been the one to fall first? Hadn’t he been gushing over her to Kay while she’d seemed to go out of her way to avoid him? To talk about the future would be to rush her, and so Cassian never said anything either, carefully biting back his questions and confessions. It somehow never truly occurred to him that his fierce, independent Jyn (his Jyn whose father had _chosen_ to leave her) didn’t need careful. She needed him to be loud enough to drown out the voices telling her that he would leave too.

He knows better now. He takes a moment to put his thoughts into words. ‘Jyn, I am ready. I’ve been ready for a while now, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.’

Relief is clear in her voice. ‘It’s okay, I know you needed time.’ He’s about to continue but she beats him to it. ‘I- I really did mean it, what I said. Whatever you want, Cassian, wherever you’re at, that’s where I am, all the way.’

She took the words straight out of his mouth and he casts around for new ones, something clear and definite to give her. When he finds them, that cautious part of him balks at them, whispering that they’re too much. Cassian ignores it. ‘I want to marry you one day, Jyn Erso.’

A soft, involuntary sound escapes Jyn. ‘Then one day, Cassian Andor, I’m going to ask you.’

 

A few days later, Cassian finds himself once again wandering the halls of August Memorial to the dulcet tones of someone yelling at Rodrigo. This time it’s Hailey. He walks into Rodrigo’s office to find them sitting close to each other on the relatively large sofa, looking over a score.

Hailey’s worked up, pointing at what must be a dynamic marking. ‘It says mezzo forte for a reason, you can’t just ignore Tchaikovsky!’

Rodrigo responds with equal gusto. ‘Yes I can! Tchaikovsky is an asshole, so rude. This is an important part, it needs to be forte.’

‘But then it has nowhere to go when it actually is forte down here. Not everything has to be loud and dramatic all the time, oh my god!’ Hayley throws her hands in the air and looks so much like the man she’s glaring at that Cassian can’t help but laugh.

He takes a look at the score and turns to Rodrigo. ‘She’s totally right, you know.’

Without modulating his tone, he responds _Evidentemente, pero estoy tratando de enseñarle algo. Quiero que ella confíe en su propia opinión.'_

Hailey hits Rodrigo’s arm.

He yelps. ' _A_ _y,_ Hai Lai!'

'Stop talking about me in another language. Also, I _am_ totally right and you should admit it.’ It strikes Cassian how much Hailey has changed since she’s been with the orchestra, how she’s grown into herself.

Rodrigo raises his hands in surrender. ‘Okay, you’re right. We’ll do it your way.’

She smiles and then he smiles and Cassian wonders if he should leave the room.

The timer for the mate goes off and Hailey springs up. ‘Do you want some, Cassian?’

‘If you’re making it, then yes, please.’

Rodrigo turns to him. ‘How are you, _hermanito_? How is Jyn?’ He waggles his eyebrows.

‘She’s good. She’s coming home this week.’ It feels like a dream just to say it.

‘Hmmm, I know. She called me this morning.’

‘Really? Why?’ He knows Jyn is fond of Rodrigo, but they’re not close enough to call and chat.

‘She wanted to know when you’ll be away on tour next year, so she can plan her tour at the same time.’

Hailey coos as she sets a cup of tea in front of him and hands Rodrigo his gourd. ‘That’s so sweet.’

It feels strange to have his relationship so on display, so Cassian sips his tea to avoid showing his smile. It’s one thing for Jyn to talk about a future with him, but he’s almost overwhelmed that she’s actively planning for it, trying to work around the obstacles that seemed insurmountable to her last time. As he sits and talks with his friends, he surreptitiously checks the countdown he’s set. Only six days, one hour and 37 minutes and they can’t possibly pass soon enough.

 

On the subway ride to JFK, Cassian can barely stop his leg bouncing with joyful impatience. He feels like a little kid again. As soon as he walks through the doors though, the anticipation curdles in his stomach. It’s a different terminal, a different flight, but he’s suddenly drowning in memories of that night. He swallows, mouth dry and muscles tensed as if braced for impact. _She’ll be here_. The words repeat over and over in his head while he forces himself to breathe.

With slightly shaking hands, he reaches for his phone. He desperately wants to hear her voice but the thought of listening to her voicemail in this place makes something in his chest tighten to near pain. He slips the phone back in his pocket and turns back to the screen. _It’s okay. She’s coming, she’s close._

His attempt at reassurance is interrupted by the sudden jolt of someone running into him. The brief moment of free fall is all too familiar. Hands rush to hold the back of his head as if to protect it from the fall but this time he manages to catch himself and the person in his arms, a person who feels so much like Jyn his heart stops. At first, he thinks the situation is playing tricks on him but then she looks up at him, her face radiant, and it’s _her._

Surprise and overwhelming relief make his voice shaky. ‘ _Jyn?_ ’

She smiles, wide and open-mouthed, the way she only ever does for him, and crushes him to her. His arms tighten around her in response and the dizzying wave of emotion sets his whole body trembling.

Her lips kiss their way up to his ear to whisper, ‘I’m here, Cass. It’s alright.’

He nods and tries to express the wild, blind joy of having her here in his arms, but all that comes out is a sob, wrenched from his chest against his will. He buries his head against her neck, embarrassed to be falling so totally apart in such a public place.

Jyn just holds him, murmuring comfort as her hands draw calming circles over his back and through his hair.

Cassian focuses on all the small details of her, reassuring himself that this is not another one of the countless dreams he’s had that are identical to this moment. He breathes in her scent, fresh and clean, laced with the perfume he bought her for their third anniversary and that she never stopped using. Her hair is slightly damp against his cheek, too much to be from his tears. Curiosity, along with her soothing voice, manages to calm him down enough to ask, ‘Jyn, how have you showered? Your plane only just landed.’

She hums in satisfaction. ‘Actually, my plane landed two hours ago.’

He pulls back to look at her. ‘What? I could have sworn you told me it was this one. I didn’t mean to make you wait-’

Her finger presses against his lips. ‘I did tell you it was this flight because I couldn’t bear to make _you_ wait. Not here.’ She draws a gentle line across his bottom lip and then cups his cheek. He turns his head to kiss her palm and her blinding smile is back. Her voice is soft and warm as velvet, letting him know he’s speaking to _his_ Jyn, her heart completely unarmoured. ‘Hello, Cassian.’

He wishes he could go back five years and show this moment to that broken version of himself, scrambling for hope that the woman he loved was who he thought she was, that she would come back to him. He settles for returning her smile, his eyes crinkling. ‘Hello, Jyn. Welcome home.’

Rising up on her toes, she kisses his cheek, slowly, carefully. When he leans in to it, moving his hands down to hold her hips steady, she brushes her lips down until she reaches his mouth.

She kisses him the way he’s wanted, gentle and lingering, like there’s nothing else she’d rather be doing. Her thumbs trace his cheekbones like they’re made of something infinitely precious before her fingers sink into his hair, tracing over his scalp until he shivers. He draws his palms over the swell of her hips to follow the curve of her spine, crossing his arms against her back as he holds her tight to him.

Her body softens even further into his and even when he pulls back from her lips, she stays close, tucking her head under his chin and pressing small kisses to his clavicle. He nuzzles against her hair and she hums, wrapping her arms around him.

They stay like that for what seems like hours, the rushing flow of people parting around them. He’s thought about this moment so often. He’d always imagined himself overwhelmed and desperate, caught between tears and the need to find a hard surface and a locked door, but it’s not like that. He’s just calm and content, heart full to bursting with love and unafraid of it.

Eventually, Jyn pulls back and looks up at him. Her eyes promise joy and trust and sex and everything he’s ever wanted. ‘Come on, take me home.’

He does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish translation to people on mobile: 'Obviously, but I'm trying to teach her something. I want her to trust her own opinion.'
> 
> Well, there you go. This is the last chapter of this fic, but I've planned a whole bunch of marshmallow fluff scenes of their future relationship, so stay tuned.  
> Thank you so much to everyone who's read and commented, it's been wonderful sharing this (over-elongated I know) experience with you all.


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